CNN’s Puff Piece on Transgender Issues

CNN has published an article on transgender that gets one thing right: Many more young adults are claiming to be transgender compared to only a few years ago. The title: "High schoolers may be more gender-diverse than previously thought, new study says."

This is a classic one-sided puff-piece honed to fit the prevailing narrative. Apparently, we can sidestep a well-established medical term "gender dysphoria" by simply asking a CHILD if they are gender dysphoric (ignoring the effects of social media driven contagion). That number of almost 2% number corroborates with what Abigail Shrier stated, when she was excoriated for suggesting that something ELSE was going on when there is a 4000% increase in "gender dysporia" within a few short years (and see here). According to this CNN article, it's supposedly all very simple:

More awareness, more understanding, more exploration. One is that there is a greater understanding of the naturalness of gender diversity, whether that's expressed in terms we use to define ourselves, the way we dress, or how we see ourselves in relation to our culture. "Being gender-diverse is a totally normal part of human experience," [Dr. Kacie] Kidd said.

I have no problem with any adult doing anything they want with their body, sleeping with anyone they want, doing any surgery or hormones. But I am against casually expanding a known and useful medical term that only yesterday applied to only 1 out of 10,000 people, mostly males, claiming that it now applies to almost 2% of high schoolers, mostly girls, shutting off the obvious questions that should be asked about why this is happening. There are no mentions of "contagion" or "Shrier" in this article. There is no mention of the dangers of teenage use of puberty blockers and hormones (including sterility). There is no mention that therapists are being prevented from giving real counseling to teenagers who claim to be transgender based on "conversion therapy" laws. This article has been carefully pruned to make sure that serious pressing questions are not raised.

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About Team-Thinking

On this issue, I agree (more or less) with Helen Pluckrose. I consciously strive to gather my information and do my thinking à la carte. No team-thinking for me, because hypocrisy is ubiquitous. For me, it's issue by issue, person by person. This makes gathering and evaluating news stories much harder than permanently signing up for, e.g., e.g., NYT/NPR/CNN or e.g., FOX//Drudge/National Review. I admire Helen's courage, intellect, kind-heartedness and humility. She recently founded Counterweight, which I can generally support (but not always!).

I find this position easy to adapt, given that the first 20 years of my life forced me to develop deeply rooted defenses against my father trying to force/humiliate me into declaring allegiance to the Catholic Church as the "one true holy apostolic church.  Lots more on my journey here, in a five-part series I titled "Mending Fences." I think and hope that I am immune to anyone trying to get me to express belief in anything based on social pressure.  It has been a long, sometimes difficult, journey, given the anger many people express when you don't show loyalty to their "team."  That, however, is a small price to pay for the ability to look in the mirror and not see a sell-out.

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Jeopardy’s Wokeness Contagion

From the NYT, a Jeopardy story of liberal contagion following a contestant gesturing that he won three games with three fingers:

A full 595 former contestants eventually signed on to the final draft of the letter, asking why “Jeopardy!” hadn’t edited out the moment. It went on to proclaim: “We cannot stand up for hate. We cannot stand next to hate. We cannot stand onstage with something that looks like hate.”

.    .    .

So the element of this story that interests me most is how the beating heart of nerdy, liberal fact-mastery can pump blood into wild social media conspiracy, and send all these smart people down the sort of rabbit hole that leads other groups of Americans to believe that children are being transported inside refrigerators. And, I wanted to know, how they could remain committed to that point of view in the absence of any solid evidence.

What caused this insanity? It's a well-written article by Ben Smith, with applications far beyond Jeopardy. One of the reasons: "Social media turns just about everything into a kind of team sport, including analyzing the ills of social media."

This is a clear example of liberal contagion, in a world filled with both liberal and conservative contagion.

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The Most Bigoted Book . . .

From Titania McGrath, dedicated to keeping us all on track: And if you have any friends who are teetering from this vile poison spewed by dictionaries, by all means keep them away from Colin Wright:

Wright is a bad person because Wright lives in a fact-based world and reports on articles like this, which contain facts:

From the Daily Mail:

A student who said women were born with female genitals and the difference in physical strength between men and women 'was a fact' is facing disciplinary action by her university.

Lisa Keogh, 29, who studies law at Abertay University in Dundee was reported to university chiefs by her classmates after she said that women were not as physically strong as men.

The mature student, who is in her final year, is now facing a formal investigation by the university for the alleged 'offensive' and 'discriminatory' comments.

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Money Talks When Apple Starts Swinging the Hatchet

Apple fired Advertising Platform Specialist Antonio Garcia Martinez two days ago, convicting him of insensitivity to women after cherry picking a few sentences from his universally acclaimed 5-year old book, Chaos Monkeys, and giving those sentences the least-charitable readings possible. Apple announced:

At Apple, we have always strived to create an inclusive, welcoming workplace where everyone is respected and accepted. Behavior that demeans or discriminates against people for who they are has no place here.

In the meantime (as Matt Taibbi points out), Dr. Dre remains on Apple's board despite authoring "such classics as “Bitches Ain’t Shit” and “Lyrical Gangbang,” who is also the subject of such articles as “Here’s What’s Missing from Straight Outta Compton: Me and the Other Women Dr. Dre Beat Up.” It sure helps to be a billionaire when you are hoping that your employer will stand up to the Woke mobs.

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